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We study ways children and teachers negotiated and debated meanings and understandings around classifying matter in solids, liquids, and gases via everyday objects. This is part of a larger collaborative teacher research program involving two university-based researchers (in science and literacy education), six Chicago Public School teacher researchers teaching 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grades, and twelve Education graduate students.

We explore curricular and pedagogical affordances in the context of two integrated science-literacy units ('Matter' and 'Forest') that engage children in various experiences—read-alouds of children’s literature information books, hands-on explorations, whole-class and small-group conversations, journaling, semantic mapping, mural construction, literature circles, composition of illustrated information books, and home projects. In this study, we focus on the Matter unit and the activities related to the read-aloud book 'What’s the World Made Of' and the hands-on exploration of sorting various everyday objects in solids, liquids, and gases. The objects were selected to spark debate and disagreement among children—shaving cream in a plastic baggie, a drinking straw, a rubber band, a cleaning sponge, a can of chicken noodle soup, salt in a plastic baggie, etc., and intentionally, in the cases involving more than one substance, children were not told which 'part' of an object to focus on.

We study how children (of low socioeconomic status, and various ethnoliguistic backgrounds) worked with peers and teachers to negotiate ways of sorting objects, and reasoned about their decisions. We identify and understand power and status relations that are played out in small- and big-group work, and specify four types of reasons children used to classify substances—structural characteristics associated with substance form, prototypes, process of elimination, and object functions. We link the curricular and pedagogical principles and enactments underlining these units with our finding that children much younger than current scholarship specifies debate important differentiations.

Stream: Curriculum and Pedagogy, Student Learning, Learner Experiences, Learner Diversity, Literacy, Language, Multiliteracies, Maths, Science and Technology Learning

Paper: A paper has not yet been submitted.

Maria Varelas is Professor of Science Education at the College of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). Her college education started at the University of Athens in Greece, continued at the University of Rochester (New York), and culminated with a PhD from the University of Illinois at Chicago where she eventually became a faculty member in 1993 and got promoted to Professor in 2005. Her disciplinary focus spans physics, teaching physics in secondary schools, and science education predominately in elementary schools but also more generally in K-16 settings.

Her research, teaching, and service are highly interrelated, focusing on classroom-based teaching and learning of science in urban settings with linguistically and socio-culturally diverse populations, collaborative teacher action research, discourse in science classrooms, integration of science and literacy, and science education reform in elementary school and college science classrooms.

She is currently co-leading with colleagues from UIC’s College of Education and / or College of Liberal Arts and Science three multi-year National Science Foundation-funded projects—one that supports the development, implementation, and studying of a set of new science courses for elementary education and non-science majors at UIC and Chicago-area Community Colleges, one that supports a partnership between Chicago Public School K-12 teachers and graduate students in UIC’s science and mathematics departments, and her latest one, ISLE (Integrated Science-Literacy Enactments), a collaborative teacher action research project to explore integrated science-literacy learning and teaching in Chicago Public School primary-grade classrooms.

She has consistently taught in the Elementary Education program and has received several awards for excellence in teaching from students and peers. Her research has appeared in a variety of journals (Journal of Research in Science Teaching, Science Education, Cognition and Instruction, Educational Researcher, Research in Science Education, Linguistics and Education, Science and Children) and edited books.

Christine C. Pappas is Professor of Language and Literacy at the College of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

She is a co-author of the 4th edition of "An Integrated Language Perspective in the Elementary School: An Action Approach," which emphasizes the use of language and literacy and other modes of meaning as tools for inquiry and learning across the curriculum. More recently she has collaborated with Maria Varelas, a science educator, and six Chicago Public School primary-grade teachers, to develop and study integrated science-literacy units in a NSF-sponsored collaborative school-university action research project.

Her teaching and research focus on classroom discourse, genre (especially informational and science ones), teacher inquiry, collaborative school-university action research (CSUAR), and the development of culturally responsive pedagogy. She has received the Award for Excellence in Teaching and her research has been published in book chapters and various journals (e.g., Cognition and Instruction, Discourse Processes, Journal of Literacy Research, Journal of Research in Science Teaching, Language Arts, Linguistics and Education, Reading Research Quarterly, Research in Teaching of English). She has also co-edited two volumes on a Spencer-sponsored CSUAR project, in which 13 elementary urban teachers took on collaborative styles of teaching with students from various ethnolinguistic backgrounds: "Working with Teacher Researchers in Urban Classrooms: Transforming Literacy Curriculum Genres" and "Teacher Inquiries in Literacy Teaching-Learning: Learning to Collaborate in Elementary Urban Classrooms."

Justine Kane is a doctoral student in Curriculum Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She has a Masters degree in Language, Reading, and Culture from the University of Arizona and has taught various grades in elementary school for twenty years. She is currently a research assistant with ISLE, Integrated Science-Literacy Enactments, a collaborative teacher action research project to explore integrated science-literacy learning and teaching in the Chicago Public School primary-grade classrooms.

Amy Arsenault is a doctoral student in Curriculum Design at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), College of Education. Amy earned her Bachelor of Science degree in Psychology and Anthropology from Michigan State University. She then went on to earn her Master of Arts in Anthropology from UIC. She is currently an adjunct faculty member at Harold Washington College teaching anthropology. Amy is a research assistant in the ISLE (Integrated Science-Literacy Enactments) Project focusing on a 2nd grade Chicago Public School classroom. Her educational research interests include museum education, informal science education, and the taboo of teaching evolution.